Dr Chris Barnard performs the world’s first human heart transplant | South African History Online South African History Online Home » Dr Chris Barnard performs the world’s first human heart transplant Dr Chris Barnard performs the world’s first human heart transplant Dr. Chris Barnard Source: Sunday, 3 December 1967 On 3 December 1967, South African doctor, Dr Christiaan (Chris) Barnard , performed the world's first human to human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town. This extraordinary event which pushed the boundaries of science into the dawn of a new medical epoch took place inside Charles Saint Theatre at Groote Schuur Hospital. After a decade of heart surgery, Barnard and his gifted cardiothoracic team of thirty (which included his brother Marius), were well equipped to perform the nine hour long operation. The recipient was Louis Washkansky , a fifty three year old grocer with a debilitating heart condition. Washkansky received the heart of Denise Darvall, a young woman who was run over by a car on 2 December and had been declared brain dead after suffering serious brain damage.

Her father, Edward Darvall agreed to the donation of his daughter's heart and kidneys. The operation started shortly after midnight on a Saturday night and was completed the next morning just before 6 a.m. when the new heart in the chest of Louis Washkansky was electrically shocked into action. After regaining consciousness he was able to talk and on occasion, to walk but his condition deteriorated and died of pneumonia eighteen days after the heart transplant. Groote Schuur Hospital has set up the ‘Heart of Cape Town Museum’ which honours those who played a leading role in the surgical feat. Theatres A and B are the orginal theatres and have been recreated to display an authentic representation of the ground breaking operation. References: • Fischer, J. (2011) ‘Louis Washkansky’ from To Transplant and Beyond [online]. Available at [Accessed 04 November 2011] • Malan, M. (1968). Heart Transplant: The Story of Barnard and the "Ultimate In Cardiac Surgery. Johannesburg: Voortrekkerspers.

Christiaan Barnard, 78, Surgeon For First Heart Transplant, Dies - The New York Times The New York Times World |Christiaan Barnard, 78, Surgeon For First Heart Transplant, Dies Search Continue reading the main story Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard, the South African surgeon who performed the world's first human heart transplant in 1967, died yesterday in Cyprus. He was 78. Dr. Barnard suffered a fatal asthma attack in the morning after going for a swim at a coastal resort in Paphos, where he had been vacationing, The Associated Press said, citing a statement from the Christiaan Barnard Foundation. Dr. Barnard's first heart transplant patient, Louis Washkansky, lived only 18 days, though his second, Dr. Philip Blaiberg, lived more than 19 months. A medical circus followed as surgeons elsewhere tried the experimental operation with little success. Then with the development of more powerful antirejection drugs and additional experience, the heart transplant operation became standard. It has been performed an estimated 100,000 times around the world.

Today the procedure is carried out in 160 hospitals in the United States alone, with a one-year success rate of 85 to 90 percent and a five-year success rate of 75 percent. Continue reading the main story Other doctors had been preparing to perform a human heart transplant when Dr. Barnard, then 45, shocked the world on Dec. 3, 1967, by removing a patient's dying heart and replacing it with a healthy one taken from an accident victim at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the view of some experts, perhaps Dr. Barnard's most important medical contribution was his courage to proceed with a human heart transplant at a time when other surgeons who had performed the operation only on animals continued to hesitate to be the first to transplant a heart in a human. But to one heart transplant pioneer, Dr. Norman E. Shumway of Stanford University, Dr. Barnard's surgical feat was outweighed by his decision to choose as the first heart donor a brain-dead accident victim.

''It made the use of brain-dead victims acceptable for organ transplantation'' because at the time ''there was a terrible furor about the brain death issue in the United States,'' Dr. Shumway said in an interview yesterday. District attorneys had threatened to arrest surgeons who took organs from brain-dead individuals. So, Dr. Shumway said, brain surgeons ''at Stanford and other institutions would disconnect the patient from a respirator, continue their rounds and, 20 minutes later, when the patient's heart had stopped, declare the patient dead, which, of course, was ridiculous.'' ''Without Dr. Barnard's initial use of the brain-dead patient, we could not have gone ahead'' to make heart transplants a standard therapy, Dr. Shumway said. ''It was a monumental advance, more societal perhaps than medical, because it applied to all organ transplants.'' During apartheid, Dr. Barnard ignored many racial barriers in the country, including allowing mixed-race nurses in the operating room to treat white patients and transplanting the heart of a white woman into a black man. Dr.

Barnard condemned South Africa's racial policies while refusing to agree that the country's political system ought to be turned over to the black majority. At a news conference yesterday, Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first post-apartheid president, said Dr. Barnard ''was one of our main achievers'' who ''also has done very well in expressing his opinion on'' apartheid. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dr. Barnard's surgical skill and daring catapulted him almost overnight into the role of international savant, and his views on almost everything from global politics to jogging were eagerly sought by heads of state, the United States Congress and the general public. Dr. Barnard, born to genteel poverty as the son of a wilderness missionary, clearly enjoyed the limelight. His tousled good looks, ready wit and ad libs only quickened his journey to fame. He was soon enrolled as a member of the jet set, became involved in a tempestuous affair with an international sex symbol, and then, at the age of 48, divorced his wife of 22 years and married the teen-age daughter of a multimillionaire. His third marriage, to Karin Barnard, ended earlier this year.

He is survived by five of his six children: Deidre, Christiaan, Frederick, Armin and Lara, and a brother, Marius. ''Any man who says he doesn't like applause and recognition is either a fool or a liar,'' Dr. Barnard once said in discussing the pressures of public life. ''You learn from mistakes, but success gives you the courage to go on and do even more.'' Christiaan Neethling Barnard was born on Nov. 8, 1922, in the hamlet of Beaufort West in the arid wilderness of the Cape Province, to Adam Hendrik Barnard and the former Maria Elisabeth de Swart. His father was a Dutch Reformed minister who served as a missionary to racially mixed people and as such was all but shunned by many whites. The minister's salary was never more than $750 a year, yet he managed to provide for a family with four sons, sending three through college. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy It was his mother, Dr.

Barnard often said, who instilled in him and his brothers the belief that they could do anything they set their minds to -- and do it well. Young Christiaan ran a record mile in his bare feet; he won a school tennis championship with a borrowed racquet and cardboard covering the holes in his sneakers, he studied by rural firelight and was at the top of his class. After receiving a medical degree from the University of Cape Town in 1946, Dr. Barnard worked for two years as a general practitioner in a small farming village, then returned to the Cape Town Medical School to study birth defects and diseases affecting the bowel. In 1955 he went to Minneapolis to study general surgery with Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen at the University of Minnesota. In his first weeks there he was so short of funds that, he said, he had to mow lawns, wash cars and do other odd jobs to obtain meal money. Dr. Barnard arrived in Minneapolis just as the field of open heart surgery was developing, spurred by the new technologies that produced such equipment as heart-lung machines. After being invited to lend a hand with the device one day, Dr.

Barnard decided to take further training at the Medical College of Virginia to become a heart surgeon in South Africa. Advertisement Continue reading the main story He spent additional years conducting experimental surgery on animals in Cape Town and assembling a surgical team, which included his brother, Dr. Marius Barnard, before he felt that he was ready to ask Mr. Washkansky in November 1967 to become the first recipient. Several potential donors were considered, and the 30-member surgical team was alerted several times, only to be stopped for various technical reasons. On Dec. 2, Denise Darvall, a 25-year old accounting-machine operator, was struck by an automobile while crossing a street in Cape Town. She was rushed to Groote Schuur Hospital, where her brain was found to be clinically dead. Her heart was found to be in good condition, and she had the same blood type as Mr. Washkansky, a grocer. In an interview, Dr. Barnard described the crucial moments: ''As soon as the donor died, we opened her chest and connected her to a heart-lung machine, suffusing her body so that we could keep the heart alive. I cut out the heart.

We examined it, and as soon as we found it was normal, we put it in a dish containing solution at 10 degrees centigrade to cool it down further. ''We then transferred this heart to the operating room where we had the patient and we connected it to the heart-lung machine. From the time we cut out the heart it was four minutes until we had oxygenated blood going back to the heart muscle from the donor's heart-lung machine. We then excised the patient's heart.'' The donor heart was sutured in place, the organ was warmed gently and as it approached normal body temperature it started to beat vigorously. But Mr. Washkansky was left open to infection from the large doses of immune suppressing drugs (azathioprine and hydrocortisone) and radiation, and he died of pneumonia. On Jan. 2, 1968, Dr. Barnard caused a sensation in South Africa by transplanting the heart of a young man of mixed race into a retired white dentist, Philip Blaiberg. He survived for 19 months and 15 days, in part because Dr. Barnard's team had reduced the amount of antirejection drugs. Dr.

Barnard also performed heart-lung transplants and ''piggyback'' transplants in which he grafted a second human heart to the patient's damaged heart with the aim of giving it time to heal. Advertisement Continue reading the main story About 2,100 heart transplants are performed in the United States each year. But because of a severe shortage of donors, surgeons are testing self-contained artificial hearts and other mechanical devices to keep patients alive until a donor heart becomes available for transplant. Researchers are also trying to develop cross-species transplants. Dr. Barnard continued operating until 1983, when his once-nimble fingers became gnarled by the rheumatoid arthritis that had been first diagnosed when he was in Minneapolis. In recent years, he spent most of his time in Austria, The Associated Press reported. Dr. Barnard turned to writing, producing an autobiography and several novels that were reviewed politely, though his literary skill never drew the attention his surgical skills attracted. In 1984, he became scientist in residence at Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City. In 1986, Dr.

Barnard endorsed Glycel, an antiaging skin cream, but its questionable effectiveness tarnished his reputation. Christiaan Barnard Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline Physicians Christiaan Barnard Biography Christiaan Barnard is one name that we associate with the first ever heart transplant. Read more to find out about his childhood, life and timeline. Quick Facts University of Cape Town University of Minnesota It was on the historical third day of December in the year 1967 when Christiaan Barnard added a new glorious chapter to the pages of medical history with his first human-to-human heart transplant. It was his deep fascination and his sincere personal drive that led him to accomplish this groundbreaking surgery. Born and brought up in South Africa, Barnard hailed from a Dutch family and had an exceptional academic career to boast of. His interests in medicine were dedicated to tubercular meningitis in which he wrote a doctoral thesis in the year 1953. After he was transferred to the historic operation site, Groote Schuur Hospital, he developed his interests in surgery. Barnard was an avant-garde who is credited for conducting and successfully accomplishing human heart transplant.

His outspoken talents have made him one among the most significant and influential people in medicine. Barnard raised the bar by conducting a daring experiment at a time when such ideas were unheard of and deemed as dangerous and this achievement brought to the fore the true magnitude of his talent and passion. In his journey, he continued to astound people with major and remarkable achievements. Scroll further to know more! Early Life And Childhood Christiaan Barnard was born in Beaufort West, South Africa to Adam Barnard, a Dutch descendant and a priest in the Dutch Reformed Church. Barnard lost one of his brothers, Abraham due to cardiac illness when he was five years old. Barnard finished schooling at Beaufort West High School in 1940 and pursued his medical education from the University of Cape Town, Medical School where he attained his MB ChB in 1945. He completed his internship and residency in Cape Town at the Groote Schuur Hospital and was employed as a general practitioner in Ceres, which was a rural town in the Province of the Cape of Good Hope.

Later, in 1951, he returned to Cape Town and served at the City Hospital in the post of Senior Resident Medical Officer and also at the Groote Schuur Hospital as a registrar in the Department of Medicine. He received a Master of Medicine in 1953 from the University of Cape Town and the same year acquired a doctorate in medicine (MD) from the same university. His subject of thesis was entitled, ‘The treatment of tuberculous meningitis’. Christiaan received a two-year scholarship in 1956 to pursue his postgraduate training in cardiothoracic surgery in United States at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. During this time, Barnard met Norman Shumway who devoted her efforts in pioneering research of the first human heart transplant. The years from 1956-1958 in U.S. gifted him with fascinating experiences in his life as he received a Master of Science in Surgery for his dissertation — ‘The aetiology of congenital intestinal atresia’. Being awarded the Doctor of Philosophy degree the same year for his thesis on ‘The aetiology of congenital intestinal atresia’ doubled his joy.

Return To South Africa As soon as Christiaan Barnard returned to South Africa, he was offered the post of cardiothoracic surgeon in 1958 at the Groote Schuur Hospital. This marked the establishment of the hospital’s first heart unit. At the University of Cape Town, he was promoted to the post of full time lecturer and as Director of Surgical Research. After three years, he was made the head of the Division of the Cardiothoracic Surgery of the University of Cape Town at the teaching hospitals. Later, in 1962, he became the Associate Professor at the same university in the Department of Surgery. Here, Barnard worked along with his younger brother, Marius, a student of medicine who was referred to be his right–hand man at the Cardiac Surgery department. Over the course of time, Barnard gathered fame as a brilliant surgeon with remarkable contributions mainly in the treatment of Tetralogy of Fallot and Ebstein’s anomaly, cardiac diseases. In 1972, he was promoted to the post of Professor of Surgical Science at the University of Cape Town in the Department of Surgery.

As A Surgeon In 1960, he went to the Soviet Union with the aid of a bursary that he had acquired from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. He got a chance to study about the techniques of transplant of the heads and hearts on dogs. After returning to South Africa, Barnard and his brother, Marius, who was also a surgeon conducted various heart transplants in dogs. He performed this with the help of a method called Shumway technique. Towards the end of 1967, Barnard gathered confidence to perform the same on humans and was waiting for an appropriate patient and donor. Film Star Surgeon After Barnard’s first successful kidney transplant in the United States in 1953, he was all set to accomplish the same in South Africa in October 1967. During this time, several pioneering works were done in this regard — Norman Shumway’s surgical team preparing for a human heart transplant being one among them. At the same time, Barnard encountered a patient willing for a heart transplant, but the non–availability of the right donor was the problem.

Thus, an innovative yet surprising miracle took place on 3 December 1967 while Barnard operated a fifty three year Louis Washkansky, an old grocer and replaced his heart with a twenty five year old Denise Darvall. Darvall was a young woman who suffered from brain damage in an accident on 2 December 1967 in Cape Town. Barnard secured permission from her father and conducted the successful transplant. The Success Story The initial public response that he received with regard to this operation was negative and fraught with controversies and ethical oppositions. The public demanded an answer for the death of the donor since patients could live by artificial means for an unlimited period of time. However, after his successful heart transplant, his eminence was catapulted to great heights and he came to be highly regarded by his patients. Washkansky survived with the new heart for eighteen days after which he developed pneumonia because of the immunosuppressive drugs he was taking. Hence, he was able to state that in order to suppress body’s basic mechanism of rejection of foreign tissue; he should be given powerful antirejection medications.

They are known as ‘immune suppressants’ and reduce body’s resistance towards foreign tissue and thereby suppress the overall immune response as well. After the success story of Barnard with his operations, several surgeons took up the same task, but yielded poor results. The percentage of patients who survived was considerably low. Philip Blaiberg, who was Barnard’s second patient survived for 593 days (19 months) and Dirk van Zyl was the patient who lived the longest, surviving for over 23 years with his new heart. Barnard accomplished ten orthotopic transplants and was famous for his heterotropic (double heart) heart transplant in which the patient’s heart is not removed and a new heart is positioned effectively. He also gathered the fame of being the first to conduct xenograft transplantation, which he performed to save a young girl who was unable to live without artificial life support as her second aortic valve was replaced. Along with these transplants, he also continued his medical researches that comprised of ways to decelerate aging process.

The years followed with several recognitions and awards such as Dag Hammarskjold International Prize and Peace Prize, the Milan International Prize for Science, the Kennedy Foundation Award the title of ‘Professor Emeritus’ in 1984. Retirement For a while, he stopped performing transplants and spent more time in research. He retired in 1983, as the Head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town. Barnard had developed rheumatoid arthritis in his hands that almost restricted his career as a surgeon. After retiring, he worked as Scientist-In-Residence for two years in U.S at the Oklahoma Transplantation Institute and was also an acting consultant in various institutes. Though Barnard was very interested with the works on the anti-aging treatment, his career suffered a downfall in 1986, when he promoted an expensive anti-aging skin cream, Glycel. Most of his later years was spent in Austria where he setup the Christiaan Barnard Foundation, an effort laid to help the under privileged children of the world.

Major Books By Christiaan Barnard 2 Autobiographies - One Life, 1969, and The Second Life, 1993 Arthritis Handbook 50 Ways to a Healthy Heart The Best Medicine Christiaan Barnard's Program for Living With Arthritis The Donor Heart Attack: You Don't Have to Die Personal Life Christiaan Barnard was first married in 1948 to Aletta Gertruida Louw, a nurse whom he met while practicing medicine in Ceres. Deirdre and Andre were born to this couple. Barnard was more bothered about acquiring International fame, which led to their divorce in 1969. Later in 1970, he married Barbara Zoellner who was only 19 years then and they had two children Frederick and Christiaan Jr. In 1982, he divorced Zoellner and got married again in 1988 to Karin Setzkorn, a young model. Though they had two children, this marriage also did not last long and ended in 2000. "The heart transplant wasn't such a big thing surgically," he said.

"The point is I was prepared to take the risk. My philosophy is that the biggest risk in life is not to take the risk." These were his words to the Time magazine just before his death. Barnard passed away while he was on vacation in Paphos, Cyrus when he was 78 years old. He died on 2 September 2001. CHRISTIAAN BARNARD TIMELINE Christiaan Barnard was born on 8 November 1940: Completed schooling at Beaufort West High School 1945: Pursued medical education from University of Cape Town, Medical School obtained his MB ChB 1948: First human heart transplant - Dec 03, 1967 - HISTORY.com First human heart transplant Publisher A+E Networks On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident.

Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed the revolutionary medical operation. The technique Barnard employed had been initially developed by a group of American researchers in the 1950s. American surgeon Norman Shumway achieved the first successful heart transplant, in a dog, at Stanford University in California in 1958. After Washkansky’s surgery, he was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the heart. These drugs also left him susceptible to sickness, however, and 18 days later he died from double pneumonia. Despite the setback, Washkansky’s new heart had functioned normally until his death. In the 1970s, the development of better anti-rejection drugs made transplantation more viable. Dr. Barnard continued to perform heart transplant operations, and by the late 1970s many of his patients were living up to five years with their new hearts. Successful heart transplant surgery continues to be performed today, but finding appropriate donors is extremely difficult.

Related Videos Chris Barnard Performs World's First Heart Transplant | Western Cape Government Home > Documents > Public Information > C > Chris Barnard Performs World's First Heart Transplant Chris Barnard Performs World's First Heart Transplant The World's First Heart Transplant Mr Washkansky Groote Schuur Hospital was placed centre stage in the world's spotlight when Professor Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant on the third of December 1967. Sadly, Mr Louis Washkansky (pictured left) only lived for 18 days, succumbing in the end to pneumonia. His new heart beat strongly to the end. Transplanting Life - the Story of Chris Barnard Chris Barnard Christiaan Neethling Barnard was born in the town of Beaufort West, on the edge of the great Karoo, the dry and arid interior of South Africa, in 1922. His father was a preacher and there were 4 boys in the family. He did well at school , learned music and played sport, and decided on leaving school to study medicine at the University of Cape Town. The Barnard family was not wealthy but managed to secure a 3 year scholarship.

He stayed with his older brother and walked to the University. There was little money to spare and even less time for leisure. Another problem was language, as his mother tongue was Afrikaans, and he had to learn to express himself in English. After 6 years he graduated and did internship and residency at Groote Schuur Hospital and Peninsula Maternity. He then joined a colleague and moved to a small town, Ceres, and married Louwtjie. The seeds of his future career were sown when one of his patients delivered a baby boy with a heart defect which could not be remedied. The baby died, causing him to think deeply about this and foresee the need for remedial surgery and the replacement of heart valves. Back in Cape Town he studied further for his doctorate in Medicine, but heart surgery pre-occupied him. The heart-lung machine was in its infancy in the USA and considered too dangerous to use in surgical procedures. Chris proceeded with research and more study, working in converted rooms at night at minimal expense. A turning point came when he was offered a chance to work in Minneapolis, USA, under Professor Wagensteen, a great teacher of experimental surgery. The heart lung machine was perfected and this was the gateway to cardiac surgery.

The idea of transplanting occurred to Chris. If it was possible with kidneys, why not the heart? After more years of study in USA he returned to SA with a wonderful parting gift from Prof Wagensteen - a heart-lung machine. Groote Schuur Hospital was waiting his return in 1958 to start the first heart unit to perform a cardiac bypass operation. The core of the heart transplant team of the future was formed when the heart lung machine arrived. Chris was again involved in much experimental work and research, and took courses in immunology in USA where immuno -suppressive agents had been developed. Transplant Prelude Back in SA he prepared for kidney transplants and built up surgical expertise. From the legal aspect there had to be clear rules to remove organs from the human body and criterion of death. He performed the first kidney transplant at Groote Schuur on Mrs Edith Black and everything functioned perfectly. It was hailed as a major surgical event in SA. Professor Val Schrire, who had built up the Cardiac Clinic, was informed by Chris in October 1967:"Everything is ready for a heart transplant.

We have the team and we know how to do it." In November Prof Schrire called Chris and told him that there was a suitable patient for a heart transplant. Louis Washkansky was suffering from gross heart failure with a short time to live and was prepared to take the chance. One can say the rest is history. A series of events were set in motion which led to the first human heart transplant, a remarkable feat A young woman, Denise Darvall, had been struck by a car and suffered severe brain damage. Her father did not hesitate when approached for permission to donate her organs. On 3 December 1967 the team emerged from 9 hours of operating and suddenly international attention was focused on Groote Schuur Hospital. The first heart transplant could not have been achieved without the skill and support of a large team - Cardiologists, Radiologists, Anaesthetists, Technicians, Nurses, Immunologists, Pathologists, and in particular, Prof Val Schrire, head of the Cardiac Clinic. The original theatre where this transplant was performed has been turned into a museum in honour of these pioneers of medicine, and to the first donor and recipient.

Professor Christiaan Barnard passed away in Cyprus, Greece on 2 September 2001 from an acute asthma attack. The content on this page was last updated on 15 March 2014 BBC ON THIS DAY | 3 | 1968: Surgeons conduct UK's first heart transplant About This Site | Text Only 1968: Surgeons conduct UK's first heart transplant Britain's first heart transplant was successfully carried out today by a team of 18 doctors and nurses at the National Heart Hospital in Marylebone, London. The operation, which was led by South African-born surgeon Donald Ross, was undertaken on an unnamed 45-year-old man. It took more than seven hours to complete. The donor, Patrick Ryan, a 26-year-old labourer, was transferred from King's College Hospital and his heart removed immediately after his death. Recovering well Reading from a prepared statement on the hospital steps, a spokesman said: "It has gone uneventfully. The patient, as far as we know, is satisfactory." The man is said to be recovering well but his reaction to the implant over the next 10 to 14 days is expected to be critical.

Mr Ross, who was accompanied by the entire surgical team, said the operation lasted around two hours despite the fact they were working together for over seven hours. The first sign the historic operation was about to take place came at 1150 GMT when Donald Longmore, the hospital's consultant in clinical physiology, was escorted by two police cars to King's College Hospital. At 1330 GMT he drove back to the National Heart Hospital alongside an ambulance, which was carrying the donor and by 1400 GMT the initial stages of the operation were under way. Reporters and photographers were camped outside the building as soon as rumours of the operation started to circulate. The British operation is the tenth heart transplant to be undertaken in the world since Dr Christian Barnard carried out the first one in Cape Town, South Africa, last December. A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries: Christiaan Barnard Christiaan Barnard 1922 - "On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned." That's how Dr.

Christiaan Barnard recalled events in December of 1967, when he became the first surgeon to perform a heart transplant on a human being. Barnard was the son of a rather poor Afrikaner preacher and his wife, and grew up in Beaufort West, a town on South Africa's semi-arid Great Karroo plateau. He studied medicine at the University of Cape Town and at the University of Minnesota. In Minneapolis he began helping researchers who were working on a heart-lung machine, and soon switched his specialty from general surgery to cardiology and cardiothoracic (heart-lung) surgery. By 1967, Barnard was senior cardiothoracic surgeon at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, where he had introduced open heart surgery and other pioneering surgical procedures. He had spent many years experimenting with heart transplantation, mostly with dogs. The first successful kidney transplant had been done in 1954, opening this exciting surgical frontier. Barnard had a patient, 55-year-old Louis Washkansky, who had diabetes and incurable heart disease.

Washkansky could either wait for certain death or risk transplant surgery with an 80 percent chance of surviving. He chose the surgery. As Barnard later wrote, "For a dying man it is not a difficult decision because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would never accept such odds if there were no lion." Early in December of 1967, Denise Darvall, a woman in her mid-20s, was fatally injured in an automobile accident. She had had the same blood type as Washkansky. She died shortly after arriving at the hospital, but her heart was still healthy. In a five-hour operation on December 3, Barnard successfully replaced Washkansky's diseased heart with the healthy heart. He knew it was a surgical success when he first applied electrodes and it resumed beating. Washkansky lived for only 18 days more, dying of double pneumonia as a result of his suppressed immune system. It was a milestone, however, in a new field of life-extending surgery.

Barnard was celebrated around the world for his daring accomplishment. Handsome and only 45 years old at the time, he graced the covers of magazines, toured the world, and became quite a popular figure. He enjoyed his fame, but it strained his marriage of 21 years. His first wife was a nurse who had helped support him while he developed his career as a surgeon. They were divorced in 1969, and Barnard married his second wife the following year. This marriage, too, ended after 12 years. He married for a third time. He had five children, spanning 32 years, but one of his sons died at age 31. Barnard had been bothered by rheumatoid arthritis since he was young, and advancing stiffness in his hands forced his retirement from surgery in 1983. He took up writing, however, and wrote a cardiology text, a (sometimes sensational) autobiography, and several novels, including a thriller about organ transplants. He lives on a 32,000 acre sheep farm and game preserve in the Karroo region where he grew up, where he reintroduced wildebeest and springbok.

He has just two regrets in his long and eventful career. First, he endorsed an "anti-ageing" skin cream in 1986, which turned out to be of dubious effectiveness and was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 1987. Although his endorsement made him a great deal of money, it tarnished his medical reputation. His only other regret was not fighting harder against South Africa's policy of apartheid. "I opposed it whenever I could," he said. "But I didn't stick my neck out." A Brief History of Heart Transplantation | Columbia University Department of Surgery Cardiac Transplant Program A Brief History of Heart Transplantation Long before human-to-human transplantation was ever imagined by the public, scientists were conducting pioneering medical and surgical research that would eventually lead to today's transplantation successes. From the late 1700s until the early 1900s, the field of immunology was slowly evolving through the works of numerous independent scientists. Among the notable breakthroughs were Ehrlich's discovery of antibodies and antigens, Lansteiner's blood typing, and Metchnikoff's theory of host resistance.

Because of advances in suturing techniques at the end of the 19th century, surgeons began to transplant organs in their lab research. At the start of the 20th century, enough experimentation had taken place to know that xenographic (cross species) transplants invariably failed, allogenic transplants (between individuals of same species) usually failed, while autografts (within the same individual, generally skin grafts) were almost always successful. It was also understood that repeat transplants between same donor and recipient experienced accelerated rejection, and that graft success was more likely when the donor and recipient shared a "blood relationship." Alexis Carrel was a French surgeon and Nobel laureate whose experiments involved sustaining life in animal organs outside the body. He received the 1912 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for his technique for suturing blood vessels. In the 1930s, he collaborated with the aviator Charles Lindbergh to invent a mechanical heart that circulated vital fluids through excised organs. Various organs and animal tissues were kept alive for many years in this fashion. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, small but steady research advances were made.

In 1958, Dickinson Richards, MD, chairman of the Columbia University Medical Division, and Andre Cournaud were awarded the same Nobel Prize for their work leading to fuller understanding of the physiology of the human heart using cardiac catheterization. In that same year, Keith Reemtsma, MD, a member of the faculty of Tulane University who later became chairman of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center, showed for the first time that immunosuppressive agents would prolong heart transplant survival in the laboratory setting. At this time, Norman Shumway, MD, Richard Lower, MD, and their associates at Stanford University Medical Center were embarking on the development of heart-lung machines, solving perfusion issues, and pioneering surgical procedures to correct heart valve defects. Key to their success was experimentation with "topical hypothermia," the localized hyper-cooling of the heart which allowed the interruption of blood flow and gave the surgeons the proper blood-free environment and adequate time to perform the repairs. Next came "autotransplantation," where the heart would be excised and resutured in place.

By the mid-1960s, the Shumway group was convinced that immunologic rejection was the only remaining obstacle to successful clinical heart transplantation. In 1967, Michael DeBakey, MD, implanted a artificial left ventricle device of his design in a patient at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In 1967, a human heart from one person was transplanted into the body of another by a South African surgeon named Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town. In early December, Dr. Barnard's surgical team removed the heart of a 25-year-old woman who had died following an auto accident and placed it in the chest of Louis Washkansky, a 55-year-old man dying of heart damage. The patient survived for 18 days. Dr. Barnard had learned much of his technique from studying with the Stanford group. This first clinical heart transplantation experience stimulated world-wide notoriety, and many surgeons quickly co-opted the procedure. However, because many patients were dying soon after, the number of heart transplants dropped from 100 in 1968, to just 18 in 1970.

It was recognized that the major problem was the body's natural tendency to reject the new tissues. Over the next 20 years, important advances in tissue typing and immunosuppressant drugs allowed more transplant operations to take place and increased patients' survival rates. The most notable development in this area was Jean Borel's discovery of cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant drug derived from soil fungus, in the mid 1970s. The cardiac transplant program at Columbia University Medical Center began in 1971 as part of an investigational surgery program initiated by Dr. Keith Reemtsma. At that time, Columbia University Medical Center was one of only a handful of medical centers in the nation actively engaged in cardiac transplant research. Columbia University Medical Center's first cardiac transplant was performed by Dr. Reemtsma in 1977, when survival rates had begun to improve significantly. That patient survived for 14 months. Two additional transplants were performed that year. Initially Columbia University Medical Center accepted patients deemed too risky for transplantation by Stanford and the Medical College of Virginia, the only other medical centers in the country performing heart transplants.

Thanks to the persistence of pioneers in immunosuppression research, transplant patients have dramatically expanded life expectancies. The first immunosuppressant drugs used in organ transplantation were the corticosteroids. In 1983, Columbia University Medical Center became one of a small group of medical centers to initiate clinical trials of cyclosporine, which was approved for commercial use in November of that year, and is still today the most commonly prescribed immunosuppressant used in organ transplantation. General information on the variety of medications that may be prescribed for you is found in the chapter on Medications in the section Care and Concerns after Your Operation. In 1984, the world's first successful pediatric heart transplant was performed at Columbia on a four-year-old boy. He received a second transplant in 1989 and lived until he succumbed to other health issues in 2006. Also in 1984, in Loma Linda, California, Leonard Bailey, MD, implanted a baboon heart into a 12-day-old girl who came to be known as "Baby Fae." The infant survived for twenty days as the most famous recipient of xenographic transplantation.

Throughout the decade of the 1980s and into the 90s, physicians continue to refine techniques for balancing dosages of immunosuppressant medications to protect the new heart yet allow the patient sufficient immunologic function to stave off infection. In 1994 a new drug, tacrolimus or FK-506, originally discovered in a fungus sample, was approved for immunosuppression in transplant patients. Newer formulations of cyclosporine now enable efficacy (effectiveness) at lower, less toxic dosages. While research on transplantation issues continues, other techniques for the management and cure of heart disease are also under development. Some future directions include: Coronary assist devices and mechanical hearts are being developed or perfected to perform the functions of live tissues. Artificial hearts have been under development since the 1950s. In 1966, Dr. DeBakey first successfully implanted a booster pump as a temporary assist device. Columbia's cardiac surgeons have been instrumental in the development of a LVAD (left ventricular assist device) to function as a bridge-to-transplantation for those waiting for a new heart to become available.

Columbia University Medical Center's lead role in the REMATCH clinical trial helped to lead to approval for the the LVAD as a permanent, or destination, therapy as well. In 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first completely artificial heart in a human, again on a temporary basis. The first permanent artificial heart, designed by Dr. Robert Jarvik, was implanted in 1982. Numbers of patients have received Jarvik or other artificial hearts since, but surviving recipients have tended to suffer strokes and related problems. There is a tremendous gap in the number of patients waiting for new hearts and the number of organs that actually become available. In addition to avoiding the immunosuppression and rejection complications of transplantation, success in clinical application of such mechanical devices can help resolve the issue of organ availability and thus, stakes are high to continue research in this arena. Advances in immunosuppression have most recently involved the development and expanded use of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies to counteract steroid-resistant rejection. Research continues into the management, reversal and avoidance of accelerated atherosclerosis in the transplanted heart, believed to be caused or aggravated by the required suppression of the body's normal immunology.

From the development of more powerful and specific immunosuppressants to new treatments for accelerated graft atherosclerosis, advances in the science of immunology appear to hold the key to expanding the success of heart transplantation in our treatment of end-stage cardiac disease.

Question: Dr. Christian Barnard was the first person to successfully perform which type of human to human transplant?
Answer: Heart